Power drilling machines are widely used in many industries. One of the troubling problems that grips the industry is the fact that when a helical drill bit is bored into a material it will tend to produce a helically spiraled “chip” of removed material that must find its way out of the hole created by the drill bit. When the material being drilled is a metal or polymer, such chips may be a significant problem in that they can extend up to many inches, even feet, in length. As such, they tend to get wedged between the drill bit and the walls of the hole, thus causing the drill to become stuck in the hole and damaging the surface quality of the hole. The bit may even break. These are serious problems. Valuable operator time must be taken to remove a stuck drill bit, remove the chips, and recommence drilling. A drilled hole whose wall is not smooth but damaged by chips may fail specification limits, and require not only that a new hole be drilled but that an entirely new and costly work piece be introduced. Lengthy chips may even injure the operator when they are spun about by the drilling tool.
Certain solutions have been tried in the art. Drill bits and tools have been specially engineered and shaped to reduce the length of the chips that form in the drilling or cutting process. Drill bits have been provided with an air hole extending down the length of the bit to introduce compressed air at the tip in order to expel from the drilled hole chips formed at the cutting edge. “Pecking” drilling machines have been developed that, cyclically, drill into the workpiece then retract the drill bit from the hole to remove chips before drilling into the workpiece again. Oscillating drilling machines have been developed that linearly oscillate the motion of the drill bit in relation to the drilling machine, and which have the effect of breaking chips into shorter pieces.
Despite these solutions, problems and disadvantages remain. Engineering the shape of the drill bit to create chips that break regularly into manageable lengths has the result that the drill does not have an optimal shape for cutting the hole, and the quality of the surface finish of the hole may suffer. Providing an air hole in a drill bit to expel chips with compressed air can achieve only limited results. If chips are lengthy, it is difficult to expel them with compressed air. Introducing a “pecking” action in a drilling machine also introduces costly delays in the drilling process, not to mention additional costs in the manufacture of the drill itself. Although drilling machines have also been developed that linearly oscillate the drill bit in relation to the drilling machine, these machines have required design and construction from scratch to include this feature. The solution has not embraced the potential for retrofitting existing drilling machines to solve this problem. Furthermore, no solution in this area has extended to parallel differential gear feed operated drills such as the solution that is presently identified.
Thus, a need exists in the art for an improved system and method for breaking up chips created during a drilling process to facilitate their easy extraction from a work piece. Most desirably, such an improved system and method is also needed in the field of differential gear feed operated drills. It is believed that the present invention addresses these and other needs.